In this essay David Black claims that, if one pieces together the many sketches of educational decorum found in the Confucian "Analects," one will discover three types of misguided student; that is, one will come to recognize that Confucius admonishes three types of insensitive learners who, due to the lure of personal advantage and social rhetoric, begin to mismanage the exchanges of respect particular to the educational process. These students misappropriate key rituals of decorum and dialogue, and consequently create a degree of disorder that, for Confucius, actually threatens the existence of civil society.